Ecclestone: Liberty want me to stay for three years

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In the round-up: Bernie Ecclestone says F1’s new owners Liberty Media want him to remain in charge for three years.

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Is Jenson Button underrated?

Jenson’s drive [at Canada in 2011] was incredible. I still remember it as one the greatest F1 drives I have ever seen by anyone. He was unstoppable that day.

His talents and skills are dismissed far too easily by too many people. He could easily have more championships if things had gone his way more. He’s generally underrated I think and has been all his career. I think this partly stems from his lack of pole positions though which always get the headlines.
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Alain Prost was fined $5,000 by FISA (now the FIA) on this day 30 years ago for “untruthful and insulting statements” after describing his disqualification from the Italian Grand Prix as “stupid”. Prost had started the race from the pit lane in his spare car but was later black-flagged for switching cars after the formation lap had begun.

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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38 comments on “Ecclestone: Liberty want me to stay for three years”

  1. I hope Bernie enjoys his advisory role but I suspect he will tire of it and retire after a suitably face-saving time.

    1. petebaldwin (@)
      8th September 2016, 8:58

      Bernie won’t last 3 years. He’ll try some ridiculous deal to race in Syria, get rid of Ferrari or blot out the sun and Liberty will tell him to back off and he’ll throw a strop and quit.

      It does make sense to keep him in charge for the short term though as much as I despise him.

      1. Over the years, I think I have worked for three companies where the outgoing CEO/owner was asked to stay on after the company was sold. Pretty sure it was three years in all three cases, too. In not one case did the exec stay on for more than a year! Having been the chap that made the decisions, they just couldn’t stomach the idea of having to get those decisions approved or counter-signed or whatever.
        Bernie has ruled as an absolute monarch, and the only way that monarchs pass control on is by dying or abdicating. I really do not think that Bernie will grit his dentures and play by new rules, I agree with @petebaldwin, Bernie will walk away and then criticise everything from his exile.

    2. Lyndon Baines Johnson on the dictum ‘ keep your friends close and your enemies even closer ! ‘

      ‘Well….I’d rather have him inside the tent, p—ing out, than outside the tent p—ing in !’

      Reckon they know the reputation of the slippery exploiter they are dealing with quite well.

  2. Knowing now that Bernie is immortal, he will reconsider it and try to get a 20-year contract by Liberty. He might even asked to be paid those 20 years in advance.

  3. Great guys from fox, they’ll probably run attack ads on banners at the bottom of the screen during races talking about Dumocrats and their smell fair programme. Next Bill O’Reilly will be announced as the supreme sole F1 commentator with subtitles Available for $9.95…😂

  4. “That’s Eddie Jordan. If he had any money, and wanted a small wager, I’d give him good odds,” said Ecclestone.

    Somebody get the burn cream! “If he had any money” :’D Especially seeing in in Reuters.

    Meanwhile if Renault brought an engine update at Singapore, I see that as them clearly missing a Monza deadline. There would be no reason to keep it another week otherwise, hence the downplaying it as small. If it came last week it would be heralded as a much bigger change and success I’m sure.

    Honestly I think 80% of F1 drivers are underrated, by the public anyway. People seem to think if an F1 driver hasn’t won championships they’d be able to beat them around their local track.

    @4TheLoveOfIndy – I’d love to see him come down to Aus and have a crack at our supercars in the Bathurst 1000. He said he’d love to do it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHvkhlP4XUU Just as a side note actually Simona De Silvestro (former Sauber hopeful) was given a contract to be a regular racer in the series in 2017.

  5. LovelyLovelyLuffield
    8th September 2016, 5:01

    “Bernie Ecclestone’s daughters are set to share a £500million windfall if Formula One is sold to an American media tycoon.”

    Ugh. I’m supposed to be just killing Bernie, dammit.

    Hey, what? Even crime lords have to have considerations, too, you know.

  6. congratulations Bernie, you have achieved in helping to produce a 2+ hour long commercial.

  7. Three years. Well, it will probably take that long to find out where most of the skeletons are buried…

    1. Brilliant, Man !

  8. Most teams have a signed “concorde agreement” to race in f1 until 2020, so it seems Liberty is giving The Bernard this one last round of negotiations.
    So expect much of the same old same old, tantrums, bullying, breakaway series talks, coalitions, handshake deals, special treatments and the lot.

    The king is dead, long live the king!

  9. …and most of the fans would rather Bernie leave within the next three minutes.

  10. Bernie “says” they want him for 3 years or Liberty Media say they do? Lets see what Liberty actually says in a media statement & not rely on Reuters

  11. ColdFly F1 (@)
    8th September 2016, 7:58

    Still a lot unknown, but I’m glad to read in the press release by Liberty Media that they will “be good stewards of Formula One and benefit fans, teams and our shareholders.”
    I don’t recall any instance where BE acted or even mentioned to ‘benefit fans’.

    1. Talk is cheap @coldfly.

      As much as people dislike Bernie he was a known quantity. I will wait and see what Liberty say when they come out with concrete plans for the future of the sport before celebrating their arrival.

      1. @geemac a known quantity who was unpredictable!

        1. @captainpie Well, he was predictable in his unpredictability…

        2. There were always fifteen ways of interpreting any
          statement BCE made on any subject concerning his
          lifelong love affair with profit ( profit for BCE that is ! )
          So….you guys are right….lets see what actually happens
          as opposed to what they say is going to happen.

  12. Liberty Media should not be carried away by the “media part” of it and spend some time working on improving the “sport part” which, if fixed, will certainly lead to better ratings.

  13. I’ve never been much of a reader but i think i’m going to have to check out Damon Hill’s autobiography… Daft question @keithcollantine but is it living up to the hype?

    1. I think Keith mentioned yesterday that a review is coming up shortly.

  14. I think with Bernie, the problem is that they NEED to keep him for at least three more years. He’s built the whole empire up with himself as the glue that keeps it held together… like the wood of a tree, holding all the leaves in place. He has a finger in every single pie, sometimes more than one finger, and often those fingers are keeping the pies in their proper position.

    Simply ditching him immediately, and having to unravel everything without him being there, would be far more painful than keeping him on for a while and gradually shifting each pie into the hands of a new controller. Not so much a smart/dumb move by Liberty, more a necessary one.

    1. petebaldwin (@)
      8th September 2016, 10:59

      If they got rid of Bernie and brought someone else in immediately, the teams would trample all over them with demands and the sport would fall apart. There are lots of examples of countries run by evil dictators but once they die, the resulting power struggle leaves the country in an even more crazy position than it was before.

      CVC have allowed Bernie to get away with what he has – I’m not sure Liberty will… Bernie will be there to do the deals but if Liberty don’t want F1 to be racing in a certain country (for example), it won’t happen.

  15. Regarding COTD: if you are a star in changing weather conditions then you are exceptionally good. I believe that close to half of Button’s victories were in these conditions. There were races where I said to my friends: “Look the track is drying up, watch Button!”. He will not be one of the all-time greats but he sure is a worthy champion.

    1. Pat Ruadh (@fullcoursecaution)
      8th September 2016, 13:08

      @matthijs The human barometer. If I were an F1 strategist, I would have genuinely used the tactic of ‘just do what JB does’ in mixed conditions.

  16. Hey guys cmon.JB is underrated.Great driver and great COTD.
    PS Today’s my BDay

    1. Congratulations @godoff1

  17. For some reason it feels enormously troubling that Honda have a team working on the 2017 engine that’s completely siloed away from the current engineering team. Let’s hope that there’s at least some transfer of knowledge and experience built up over the past couple of years!

  18. regarding Button and COTD. I wonder if Jenson has been affected by his split with his wife, Jessica…

    1. @sato113 Performance-wise? I don’t think so, they splitted at the end of last year and he’s pretty much at the same level compared to Alonso as he was last year, he even ranked his more recent performances as some of his best ever.

      1. Also, the split seemed pretty amical from what I understand and he has a new girlfriend.

        1. yeah but it must have hurt, getting married after so long and then divorcing so quickly!

  19. “Liberty want me to stay for three years”
    Unfair F1F’s he was misquoted they missed a word mid-sentence:
    Away
    Quite
    Sobre
    in Russia
    in Brazil (with Mother in law)
    Antartica
    at FIA Formula e
    at FIA WEC
    at any other FIA event………… please

    But Cudo’s to a man that just wont let go- as he said he will quit when he has his funeral!

  20. Hail mighty Vlad Ecclestone and his glorious reign over F1 Transylvania!

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